The Lord Have Mercy, page 19
The Lord Have Mercy
Shelley Smith
© Shelley Smith 1967
Shelley Smith has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1967 by Hamish Hamilton Ltd.
This edition published in 2018 by Lume Books.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
A Wet Sunday Afternoon in June
There is nothing more dispiriting than an English village on a wet Sunday afternoon in June. The houses darkened with rain stand forlorn against a drab sky. Not so much as a thread of smoke unreels from the chimneys to promise life and comfort within (because it is June, and somewhere, at some time, someone has laid it down that, however cold the weather, fires in summer are an indulgence not to be considered). One might fancy the village abandoned, waiting to be drowned fathoms deep beneath the flooding waters of a dam.
Round the famous green the lime trees shiver ceaselessly in the fine summer rain...
The shop windows have nothing to reflect but the lowering sky; there is not a dog to be seen in the streets. Or, there might just be a stray dog, a fox terrier say, his coat stiff with moisture, scurrying down the deserted High Street with his head down, too joyless or too busy about his private affairs even to pause for the delightful savour of lamp-posts as he patters by.
A bus lumbers up the sloping road and draws to a halt. A person in a transparent mac scrambles out and without a glance round disappears down a side-turning.
Then silence again except for the gentle rustle of rain among the leaves.
Over the Bank house garden wall the chestnut blossoms drop suddenly, silently, like tears on to the pavement below...
A car hisses along the wet road. In the house on the corner the old maid draws aside the curtain to look.
“There goes the doctor” observes Miss Seymour, rubbing her chilly hands one against the other.
Catherine Duncton on her way to the post with a scarf folded over her hair saw the doctor”s car, saw him raise his hand in salute as he passed and, in her eagerness to return the greeting, clumsily knocked down a shower of wet hawthorn petals from the branch just above her head. They fell on her like confetti over a bride, fluttering on to her shoulders, clinging in her hair; and like a bride she stood there blushing as she watched the car out of sight. Then, brushing a damp petal from her cheek, she went on her way.
“You’re in my light again, Mother,” Lucien complained. “Must you stand by the window? I shouldn’t have thought there was anything to see on a day like this.”
“I’m like Keats,” said Mrs. Verney. “I can peck about the gravel with sparrows. But as it happens I was watching something very interesting: I was observing poor Kate mooning after her love, with all her passion naked on her face.”
“Who?” said Lucien, absorbed in the plans on his drawing-board.
“Darling, why don’t you listen? I’m talking about Catherine Duncton, the little soul across the way.”
“I realize that, Mother dear. I’m not an imbecile. I understood you to say she was in love with someone. And, merely in order to carry my burden of the conversation civilly and appropriately, so that you should see I was paying attention, I inquired who the man was.”
“The doctor, darling.”
“Oh. Married!” he commented without enthusiasm.
“Of course. She’s been devoted to him for years, poor wretch. How pathetic a hopeless love is! Though I suppose it’s better than not being in love at all.”
“Why should you suppose that, you dear sentimental old lavender mother? I can’t imagine a more ghastly waste of spirit.”
“It’s better to feel than not to feel, surely? It’s better to know you’re alive than to suspect you’re half dead.”
“Why is one more alive when wallowing in emotion?” he asked idly and not very clearly through the pencil in his jaws. He removed the impediment and glanced up for a moment. “Does the girl think so too?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ve been too discreet to broach the subject to her. The silly child imagines it’s a secret.”
“She must be silly indeed if she fancies one can have any privacy, mental or emotional, in a place like this where the people make it their business to find out everything they can about everyone, from the state of one’s bank balance to the condition of one’s soul. And what they can’t find out they appear to invent.”
“We’re interested in people, my pet,” said his mother, lightly brushing his hair up the wrong way as she passed. “That’s something you can never understand.”
“No, I really can’t. The febrile curiosity of the rustic mind baffles me. I mean, why bother? People are all exactly alike, I find.”
“Poor little boy,” said his mother. “You’d better have the light on; you can’t see,” she added, fetching the green-shaded lamp. “If only she had a little more ‘go’,” Mrs. Verney continued, reverting to Catherine, “she’d be someone for you to go about with occasionally. She’s really quite pretty.”
This was a piece of fatuity best ignored in Lucien’s view.
“But what hope is there for her with that bloody old man,” Eve Verney said and shook out a cigarette from the packet on the chimney shelf and lit it. The flame danced back at her from the silvery dusk of the convex mirror in its gilt frame: she saw herself, for a match-length of time, sweetly diminished – a fairy woman, and her miniature son with ivory profile and pale hair gilt beneath the lamp. “She’ll never get away from him. That’s what’s so tragic. Even when he dies at last he’ll go on wrecking her life because she’ll never be able to break away emotionally from the father-image. It’s Kismet! My God,” said Mrs. Verney with an inspired face, “I suddenly believe in Kismet. I see what it means.”
“Destiny, so I have always understood.”
“Yes, yes, exactly – Destiny! One creates one’s future in the pattern of one’s past – unconsciously of course, but that is why it is irrevocable. Can’t you see? It’s typical for her to choose someone utterly hopeless to fall in love with; she doesn’t want to face adult problems like marriage. She wants to go on being a daughter all her life.”
“Now, I’m afraid my little woman is talking balderdash,” her son lilted.
“No, I’m not.” Mrs. Verney, excited by her own brilliance, dragged at her cigarette and puffed a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “It’s the father-image again. She’s obsessed by it.”
Surprised into attention, Lucien looked up from his drawing-board and said, “You can’t tell me she’s in love with that old man!”
“What old man?”
“Dr. Horace.”
“My precious boy, don’t be dull! Poor old Horace is at least a hundred. What could have given you that idea? It’s Dr. Mansbridge, of course.”
“You said a father-image, Mother o’ mine.”
“Well, wouldn’t you call him a father-image? He must be all of forty-five.”
Lucien appeared to consider.
“Technically he could just be her father then, I suppose, if he conceived her when he was seventeen. In that case it is hardly likely that she would have been born in wedlock, since the earliest marrying age for males in this country averages twenty-five, I understand.”
“Darling, this horrible donnish sort of humour is growing on you. Be careful!”
“Dear Mama,” said Lucien. He put down his pencil and stretched back in his chair with a yawn. “I believe you’ve made up the whole thing. It sounds to me like the lubricous fantasy of a female at the menopause.”
“Lucien! That’s rude and not funny,” said Mrs. Verney, flushing.
“Sorry, Mama,” he said airily. Lucien regarded his mother – indeed all women – as something of a joke.
He was agreeably conscious of her hostile stare.
“You really are becoming quite detestable, my dear boy; you should try and do something about it before it’s too late.”
“But isn’t it splendid fun for you to have a thoroughly unsatisfactory son to gloom over? If there were time enough and energy to spare I really would endeavour to do something scandalous for your stupefaction.”
“Isn’t that exactly what I’m complaining about, my precious child, your horrible prosing dullness? I can’t think why all you young people are so boring nowadays.”
“Silly Mama,” said her son lightly, “we have supped our fill of horrors. But do go on about Miss Duncton’s frustrated sex-life. Has she written to Auntie Mollie of “Weary Women" for advice on her little problem?”
It grieves me that a son of mine should be too stupid to respect a genuine passion” Mrs. Verney said in a cold voice.
Lucien smiled. Passion he did not believe in, taking it to be a fad of idle minds. Carefully he adjusted his T-square on the drawing.
“Why, I believe I’ve offended the little woman” he said cheerfully, “but how was I to know she took this nonsense seriously?”
Really Lucien could be very irritating with his maddening assumption of superiority. With the unfailing optimism of mothers Mrs. Verney hoped, without the least encouragement, that he would grow out of it soon.
*
The doctor’s car passed the house in the High Street, with the bow windows full of Staffordshire dogs and copper warming-pans and the iron sign creaking out “Antiques” in Gothic letters, at the precise moment that Leslie Crispin opened the attic casement to eject a cigar butt. The car sped down the road and Crispin gazed after it thoughtfully.
The light fell bleakly through the glass roof on the huge sculptures below. Larger than life, with seal-like heads and monstrous limbs, it was their vague resemblance to human beings which gave them so terrifying an aspect – like a threat, or a prophecy of some new race. Repellent though they were, there was something suggestively ominous in their quiet strength. They were kin in their potency to an African fetish or an Easter Island image. But if they were considered queer it was as nothing to the queerness of their creator – a subject for mirth and sniggering behind fingers. With her cigars and her male attire, she was considered a little cracked. But because she was rich and inclined to extravagance, the villagers were careful to be scrupulously respectful to her face; there is nothing crackpot about money, wealth can always acquire its price in respect.
Having burnished her cropped hair, knotted a silk handkerchief about her throat and thrust on her hand a ring with a stone as big as a cockroach, she slung a jacket on her shoulders, ran quietly down the stairs and threaded through the furniture looming darkly at the back of the shop. China shepherdesses and a set of green wineglasses shook minutely at her tread.
At the door she paused fatally to light a cigarette and in that moment a cry came from the rear of the house.
“Is that you, darling?”
Crispin made no answer. Tautly, gently, she pressed the doorhandle down: but it was too late. With a cry of “Crispin?” her friend, Naomi Ryder, appeared in the doorway, her cheeks flushed, her dark hair wild.
“Oh, darling” she wailed when she saw her, “you’re not going out?”
Crispin flung a hand up to her brow with a martyred face.
“It’s my head. I simply have to get some air.”
“But, darling, tea’s nearly ready. Won’t you wait? It’s such a vile day that I thought I’d knock you up a batch of those teacakes you’re so fond of.”
“I’ll have them when I get back.”
“Oh, they won’t be fit to eat then. You know they need to be eaten while they’re still hot and fresh.”
Crispin gave a great sigh.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the other said in tones that plainly belied her words. “Only you might just have thought to let me know you wouldn’t be in.”
“My dear, aren’t you being a little unreasonable? How was I to know I’d have a headache?”
Naomi shrugged, nursing her grievance.
“Oh, they can easily be thrown away,” she said.
Crispin muttered something between her teeth as she turned impatiently away and opened the door.
“You won’t forget we’re going to the Ambroses,” Naomi said in a small voice.
“I had not forgotten.”
“I just wondered what time you’d be back.”
“I’m afraid I’ve no idea.”
Naomi blinked: “Now you’re cross,” she remarked in a tone that sounded more reproachful than penitent, though it was penitence that drove her nervously on.
Crispin said with exquisite precision:
“I simply wanted to go for a walk, because I happen to have a headache. If I had dreamed for an instant it would lead to all this commotion and argument, I would never have attempted anything so audacious.”
“Forgive me, darling,” Naomi said in a husky voice. “I’m sorry I made such a fuss. It was stupid of me. Of course you must go out if you feel like it, I was being ridiculous.” She hesitated, and then flushing said, “If you can wait just a moment, I’ll get my mac and come with you: Belinda needs a walk.”
Now it was Crispin who flushed.
“But this is persecution! Am I not even to go out alone now? What do you suppose I’m going to do on a Sunday afternoon?"
“Why, I simply thought” began the other in genuine be wilderment.
“I want to be alone. Can’t you understand?”
Naomi’s eye at last touched on the venetian-red silk handkerchief, the cornelian ring, and her cheeks reddened. She forced herself to speak calmly but her heart was raging within her.
“Oh, yes, I understand now, don’t worry. It was in all innocence though that I offered to come with you; I thought you might be glad of my company. But I see now that it isn’t my company you’re after. What a blind idiot I am, aren’t I? Anyone else would have realized at once why you were trying to sneak out of the house without my seeing you.”
“I’m afraid I’ve not the least idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, don’t lie! It’s so stupid. You know I always find you out. As if I didn’t know you are going to see that woman.” Foolish tears sprang to her eyes. “If only you wouldn’t LIE to me about it. That’s what I can’t bear!”
“You force me to lie, my dear, because otherwise your insane jealousy makes it impossible for me to get out of the house without a degrading scene.”
“Why should you imagine I care where you go or whom you see? It’s nothing to me. It simply makes me laugh. If you want so much to be with that woman all the time, why on earth don’t you go to her? Why not go and live with her – if she’ll have you – and then you won’t have to endure these degrading scenes and you won’t be forced to lie your way out of them,” Naomi stuttered.
“You don’t know how you tempt me” said Crispin, smiling coldly.
“Well, why don’t you go, then? What’s keeping you? You needn’t think I want you to stay; I wish to God you would go. I wish to God I’d never met you!”
“A little late to think of that now.”
“Yes. You’ve ruined my life! My God, when I think of how I’ve slaved for you! Cooking, cleaning, waiting on you hand and foot, so that nothing should interfere with your precious work.”
“No one asked you to. Why did you do it if it was so distasteful?”
“Because I believed in you,” Naomi said in a trembling voice. “I didn’t want thanks, but everyone likes to be appreciated a little. You take it all for granted. You never think of anyone but yourself. You never think how hard it’s sometimes been to keep this place going and run my business too. Of course my work doesn’t count; it’s not art. If I miss an important sale that’s just too bad. It’s never entered your head to try to make things a bit easier for me. If you’re left to wash a teacup you grumble for hours.”
“Must we go through this old hoop again?” said Crispin with her eyes closed. “If I was not paying you enough, you had only to say.”
Naomi laughed.
“Money can’t pay for what I’ve given you. That sort of service can’t be bought. See if she’ll do as much for you. Ask her to run about after you and pick your clothes off the floor” Naomi said and gave a sharp mirthless laugh like a jay’s cry.
“Oh, how your vulgarity grates on my nerves” Crispin complained with a sort of rage. “You hoard up every little thing you’ve ever done for me, like a miser, until you can bring it out years later to use against me. It’s so common, so mean. I can’t stand such pettiness! I can’t stand these rows, I warn you!”
“Well, go, then!” Naomi cried hoarsely with a trembling lip and a wild gleam in her eye. “Why don’t you go?”
“I’m going” said Crispin lightly. And went.
Naomi leaned against the closed door and put her wet face on her arm.
“Damn Editha! Damn her! Oh, damn her! I wish she was dead!”
For it was Editha she blamed, not Crispin; Editha with her cruel indifference (her very indifference to someone with Crispin’s genius and charm was an affront).
Editha was Mrs. Mansbridge, the doctor’s wife.
She had taken Crispin’s eye at last year’s Autumn Flower Show, looking very cool and bored among the hot flushed people pressing eagerly round the exhibits. She was a pale, aloof woman whose large feverishly dark eyes seemed to burn with an intense contempt for whatever they saw.
Mrs. Doctor was not popular. Apart from a few toadies in the local Conservative Women’s Association, of which she was president, people did not cotton to her. She was tolerated because of her husband. He was liked; an agreeable, good-humoured chap. What did not go well was her habit of bullying her husband in public. It embarrassed people and made them sorry for him; and that did his practice no good. The last thing anyone wants is a doctor one pities; a doctor must be a kind of god, since at some time he may hold one’s life in his hands.
